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Use the Microsoft Graph connectors API

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You can use Microsoft Graph connectors to bring data from external services into Microsoft Graph. The Microsoft Graph connectors API enables you to index external data in order to power intelligent experiences in Microsoft 365, such as Copilot and Microsoft Search.

Requests to index data are performed on behalf of an application without the presence of a signed-in user via an access token with application permission.

Build a custom Microsoft Graph connector

Building a custom Microsoft Graph connector involves four steps:

  1. Create an Entra ID (formerly known as Azure Active Directory) app registration. Along with the request to Microsoft Graph, you submit the name of the app registration and API permissions that your app needs. Microsoft Graph responds with information about the newly created app registration.
  2. Create an external connection. Each connection requires a unique ID, name, and a description.
  3. Create the schema for the external connection. The schema defines the shape of external content that you'll ingest through this Microsoft Graph connection. Creating the schema is a long-running operation. After you submit the schema to create the connection, Microsoft Graph responds with a URL that you can use to check the status of the operation. The schema is being provisioned as long as the operation status is inprogress. When provisioning completes, the operation will return a completed status.
  4. Ingest external content. For each external item, extract it from the source content repository, transform it so that it matches the schema for your external connection, and submit it to Microsoft Graph as an external item. Along with the item, include information about who's allowed to access it, also known as the access control list (ACL).

The following is a sequence diagram that illustrates the four steps to build a Microsoft Graph connector.

A diagram that shows the four steps to build a Microsoft Graph connector

Common use cases

The following table lists common use cases for the Microsoft Graph connectors API.

Use cases REST resources See also
Configuration actions
Create, update, or delete a connection externalConnection externalConnection methods
Register a schema for the external data schema schema methods
Indexing actions
Add, update or delete a custom item in the index externalItem externalItem methods

Known limitations

The following are current known limitations:

  • Organizations are limited to a maximum of 30 connections. (If you need more connections, complete the Request form.)
  • You can create up to 25 externalItem resources items per second.
  • An application is limited to 25 concurrent operations on a connection.
  • Connections have a capacity limit of 5,000,000 items or ~350 GB of data.
  • Maximum size of an externalItem entity is 4 MB.

Next steps